Saturday, March 28, 2015

Wine-y Saturday

So we've been pretty good this week when it comes to nutrition, and I think as of today I hit my step goal for the month! After that it's all just extra credit. One of my goals this week was to not have dessert, and I did really well except for Thursday when faced with a salted caramel cupcake and a gossip session with my aunt. I feel like a gossip session without cupcakes is not the kind of world I want to live in, so I had the cupcake. I also said no drinks until today, and did well with that until last night when I had one beer with deliciously spicy Korean food. Ah well. I still am feeling pretty great, and I am definitely slimmer and feel so much better than I did last week. I am going to start Tuesday weigh ins again this coming Tuesday, and I'm also due for measurements!

So today we had our wine pickup party at Soter Vineyards. I usually don't give out specific information about places we go and all of that, but it's not like the creepers of the world are going to hunt me down at Soter because believe it or not, much like Dean Martin I am not the alcoholic everyone thinks I am. ;) Anyway, I am mainly telling you about Soter because it's a really wonderful winery, so if you're ever in Oregon you really should make the effort to stop by. One of my favorite things about it is that it's by appointment only, AND the tastings are all done sitting down at a table in their open air tasting room. It's all very fancy and civilized, yet very laid back at the same time. The tasting room is at the top of a hill and is simply gorgeous. There is incredible wine in Oregon and lots of wonderful tasting room experiences, but Soter really takes things an extra step. Having worked in the industry for awhile, it definitely is mind blowing and impressive. They really have customer service down to a science, so I can't recommend them enough. Plus their wine is fantastic, and that's always a plus. ;)

I am not sure how much people are into wine and know how things work, but typically each winery has a "club" you can belong to. You commit to getting shipments at whatever interval the winery chooses (Soter is twice a year) where the winery picks an assortment of wine that you purchase at a discount. As a member you also get discounts on everything else, you taste for free anytime you want, plus you can bring guests with you to taste for free. They usually do events when the club shipments are ready called pickup parties. Depending on the winery these parties can be super fancy, or they may just have cheese and crackers out, then you grab your shit and go kind of parties. Soter is fancy. Really fancy. They shut down the entire winery and no one is allowed in other than club members fancy. So anyway, that's what we did today when I say I went to our pickup party

That's the view from the side of Soter, looking up at part of their vineyard. I know, it's horrible that I have to live with such mediocre surroundings around me right? The word "epic" gets really over-used, but the clouds were truly epic looking today.

And here is a picture that I accidentally took, but it turned out so neat that I decided to post it! The wooden building is the tasting room, and those garden boxes are all used to grow vegetables used in the tasting room for events! You can buy pickles and other things they make, plus they use things from the garden for wine pairings. They also make special little things for members, for instance at the last pickup party we each got a baggie of sunflower seeds that were grown in the garden!

They were tasting all of the wines from our shipment today (a rose, chardonnay and pinot noir), and pairing them all with food. The wines were all beautiful and the food pairings exquisite as always, but I must tell you about the most important part of the pickup party.

They had baby goats there. Three baby goats. Y'all know how I am, if there is an animal (much less a baby animal) in a 2 mile radius of me, that is my sole purpose in life. When I saw baby goats, the wine ceased to exist.

I was so sad that I just had my clutch purse today, because if I'd had my larger purse I could have totally snuck one of them in there to take home. They were the size of puppies they were so tiny! I finally did tear myself away long enough to continue tasting and to get some of the food pairings. The last pairing was this homemade pasta with a pumpkin filling (not a fan), topped with a lamb ragu. The ragu was super tasty though, and as we were eating, an adorable dog that I assume was the winery dog came over by us and looked very hopefully at me. Dogs always know a sucker when they see one.

How do you say no to that face? The answer is, you don't. If a dog that kind of looks like Falcor from The Neverending Story begs for a taste of your food, you give them a taste. So Faux Falcor got a tiny bit of my ragu fed to him, ate it nicely off of the fork, and then sat like a little gentleman so that I could snap a picture of him.

A pretty great day, but I'm ready to take a break from drinking until we go to Cleveland next month. I'm sure there may be an exception here and there, but I definitely feel better when I don't!

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About Me

I'm a Louisiana girl living in the Pacific NW, wife of the most patient man in the world, and dog mom to the grand diva of all greyhounds. Working towards a healthy weight through calorie counting and strength training and trying to have a sense of humor about it along the way!

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